Your Tasty Macros

The benchmark ASX 200 has finished the week up 1.3%, thanks to a particularly robust day of trade on Thursday. A nice recovery from last week’s depressing effort.

The XJO has now gained almost 10% over the last half year of trade…

The Reserve Bank kept interest rates on hold, once again, as expected. The US Fed also kept rates on hold.

In its March Financial Stability Review the RBA acknowledges that financial market participants “have been increasingly optimistic about the prospects for a soft landing in the global economy”.

“A substantial easing cycle in monetary policy is expected over the next two years or so, with inflation returning to central banks’ targets and unemployment rising only modestly,” he says.

Nice. Interest rates cuts as soon as June could be great for stocks, gold, and cash-strapped homeowners.

But then it goes and runs a disheartening scenario like this:

… so, who knows. The jobless rate in February also evaporated to a surprise 3.7%, adding 116,500 jobs, which makes the argument for faster rate cuts at home harder.

Almost all the forecasts were grossly inadequate (CommSec had guessimated the creation of 45,000 jobs and a 4% jobless rate).

In the US, stocks hit another record high. Social media stock Reddit also listed on the NYSE following a ~US$6.5bn IPO and gained 48% on debut.

Capturing the moment #RDDT
byu/Timely-Block4814 inwallstreetbets

This week, gold smashed though record highs above US$2200/oz before paring some gains.

After punching though US$70k last week, Bitcoin rode the rollercoaster to a mid-week low of ~US$60k and back up to US$66.5k by COB Friday.

 

ASX Small Cap Winners This Week

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ADX Energy (ASX:ADX) bagged after its Welchau-1 exploration well intersected 115m of condensate rich gas shows in the primary target formation.

Pentanet’s (ASX:5GG) run continues after the cloud gaming stock upgraded its Gen 3 cloud infrastructure with NVIDIA L40 GPUs, to bring Pentanet into the NVIDIA Graphics Delivery Network (GDN).

n 2023, NVIDA became the 7th public US company to be valued over one trillion dollars. It is currently the third most valuable company on the globe after Microsoft and Apple, with a market cap of US$2.21trn.

And shareholders of troubled Iluka (ASX:ILU) mineral sands spinout Sierra Rutile (ASX:SRX) have been thrown a lifeline in the form of an unsolicited takeover offer.

PRM Services wants to acquire all SRX shares it does not own at a price of A$0.095 cash per share, which represents a 21.79% premium to the closing price of SRX shares on 19 March.

 

ASX Small Cap Laggards This Week

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Trading Halts

Arovella Therapeutics (ASX:ALA) – Regarding a capital raise

Many Peaks Gold (ASX:MPG) – Regarding some its continuous disclosure challenges

OD6 Metals (ASX:OD6) – Regarding a capital raise

Coda Minerals (ASX:COD) – Regarding a capital raise